If you happen to be in Friesland (in the Northern part of The Netherlands), within the next two weeks, or thinking of a nice place to go, you are welcome to visit this group exhibition SPELING, featuring playful*) art works by made by many different artists. All works are for sale at this yearly summer exhibition and the prizes have been kept low.

Drawing assignment.
One day a week, two year old granddaughter J. is staying with her grandmother Maria van Daalen (Dutch poet/writer, www.mariavandaalen.com). Maria asked me to come over and make drawings of her granddaughter, a surprise gift for the girl’s parents. It really was very nice to do, i love this kind of assignments.

Special Education Art Classes (children with learning difficulties – MLK in Dutch) A series of three classes. Children, age ± 11. https://vimeo.com/131856455

Two groups (‘Groep Groen’ & ‘Groep Paars’) in SBO Het Spectrum in Amsterdam did an art project with me. In the first lesson we went outside to pick up small pieces off the street and collect them in small plastic bags. In the second lesson they created animals with what they had found, glueing them together in cigar boxes. And in the third lesson they made name tags for their art works and decorated the animal houses with paint. They also learned how to create new colors from red, yellow, blue and white: orange, purple, green, pink, etc. Many thanks to Straatjutter (Krista Peters) for the inspiration and De Rode Loper op School for giving Petra Veenstra and me the chance to do this work with the Papageno Foundation.

A series of three classes.
Children, age ± 5, developmental age ± 1,5 years.
Three lessons, exploring and discovering materials and colors.

Lesson 1: A group activity. Painting with life size brushes, hands and feet on a very big paper. How does that feel? What happens with the colors (red and yellow) when they are being mixed? Experiencing the concept / learning the words / gestures for measures (big) and colors (yellow and red, orange), other words: paint, brush, wet, dry, look. Large motor skills. Experiencing with the whole body. Having fun. Seeing beauty.

Lesson 2: Working individually, with easy to use red, yellow and blue water solvable wax crayons, artist quality. First part: drawing, starting with one color, then the next one, etc. Next part: working with a small brush and water and experiencing what happens to the colors. Experiencing the concept / learning the words / gestures for measures (small) and colors (yellow and blue). Fine motor skills. Experiencing the power to be able to create something beautiful all by yourself.

Besides photography the children also learn how to make movies: stop motion, slow motion, … Last week’s assignment was to make slow motion movies by using my iPhone.
I made a video clip using the children’s footage. Music by Iggy Pop: ‘Ambition’ (1980)

In a stately Amsterdam canal house Maartje Jaquet lives and works . A building that has been transformed several times in the course of centuries. History is not revealed in all the details, but it can’t be washed away either. The different layers and characteristics of the many periods of time are easily recognized. A rich history that Maartje Jaquet cherishes.

Her collection is broad and has a wealth of all kinds of storylines. There are works by Maarten Ploeg, Peter Klashorst and Moritz Ebinger. She presents her collection, in a generous way. Works that are related to each other, sometimes a strange piece of plastic, a casual gift, a found object or her own work. Works by American artists Vivienne Strauss, Chris Baker, Shelley Savor (from Canada) and Calvin Seibert, the latter with a surprisingly multifaceted oeuvre.

Maartje Jaquet is also known for her versatility: she draws, paints, photographs, films, makes music and writes poetry. And she makes striking collages where an old image is revived and given a new meaning. Just like her house the story was still unfinished. This reflects on her personal art collection that consists of found objects, works by others and her own work. On her studio walls you see all kinds of frame narratives, opening into new windows, like in the stories of Sherazade. Her found objects are tangible reminders of what she, as a photographer and video artist, shows to the viewer in an unadorned way: everyday things become extraordinary when you look at them in a different way. The stories on her walls are a visual diary, they talk about the source of a work of art which lead to new creations or to the purchase of a new piece which then weaves into the collection to form a new story line. Thus, the creators of the works of art and the collection itself are incorporated into one big family.

Each part of the collection can be seen as a beloved member of the family.

‘Boucles’ is part of a bigger series, ‘ Sirènes’, of which, almost simultaneously, six smaller pieces (10x10cm) are exhibited in Amsterdam too, at the exhibition ‘Springsnow in Amsterdam’ in the Amstelkerk. See my previous post for more info.

The fourth edition of this yearly event, getting bigger every year. From april 21st – may 21st, with lots of events. Go to the Springsnow website to check it all out! This year I participate in the Amsterdam Springsnow Exhibition 2015,Amstelkerk, Amstelveld 10, 1017 JD Amsterdam.

With:

“Sirènes”, a series of stitched collages, 10×10 cm each. I made these works for 10x10artist, they are also on show / for sale through their website.

On April 1st the opening of the exhibition GRAFIKI! at the 8th Montessori School Zeeburg (Amsterdam) took place. All groups, large and small, have been investigating the combination of image and language.

Art teachers who work for De Rode Loper op School were invited to work with the children. I worked with five groups of children that were either 5-7 or 6-8 years old.

For the first lesson I brought a lot of beautiful second hand books about nature, landscape, space, flowers, animals. The children looked for images from different books and combined them, by cutting and pasting, into a new image that didn’t need to be possible in real life (preferably not!): a monkey in space, huge flowers coming out of a castle, a mole on a volcano, etcetera.
In the second lesson they learned how to make names for the pictures in their collages. They discovered that, just like the pictures, words could be stuck together to make new words. The monkey in space was a “space monkey”, the mole on a volcano ‘mole eruption’. They wrote their words down, then stamped them and glued them onto their collages. Eventually all children decorated their work with crayons, in order to get a nice frame, just like you see around paintings in a museum, because on April 1st, their school will be transformed into a museum too!